Category: Uncategorized

  • Balance Financial vs. Mint

    A friend who works for a retirement plan administrator wrote to me this week saying that his firm was expanding its relationship with Mint. Last year I announced that I was expanding my affiliation with Balance Financial. Both are personal financial management tools available online either directly to consumers or though a financial advisory firm.…

  • Tax Penalties waived for farmers and fishermen this season

    The Internal Revenue Service announced on 1/18/2013 that it will issue guidance in the near future to provide relief from the estimated tax penalty for farmers and fishermen unable to file and pay their 2012 taxes by the March 1 deadline due to the delayed start for filing tax returns. The announcement is not directly…

  • New study of tides in the Delaware Bay

    A new paper on tides in the Delaware Bay will be published by Geophysical Research Letters. The abstract is reproduced below: A high-resolution study of tides in the Delaware Bay: Past conditions and future scenarios Key Points Modeled tidal evolution in the Delaware Bay shows strong spatial variability Tides respond differently to past and future…

  • The faces of Sandy tell a story of despair

    Pictures of smashed houses and overturned outbuildings seem to dominate the news headlines in these days after Sandy subsided. But the biggest impact of the storm can be seen in the faces of those affected. Two longtime residents who lost their home just stared ahead with a blank look and walked more slowly than usual…

  • Protect and pass on digital assets: How to avoid getting lost in the cloud

      The excerpt below comes from Vanguard and ties into the work I’ve been doing recently to get clients to organize store important online documents and coordinate communication with trusted advisers. Every bank, accounting system and trust company may offer its own version of secure cloud-based asset management, but the concept is the same. I…

  • Preview of “Networked Life” course and Coursera.org review article

    I learned of Coursera.org and this particular course through the recent NPR media coverage in the first few days of October. As a volunteer columnist for the New Jersey CPA organization, I enrolled in this course in order to sample the service with the intention of using this experience as the basis for a review…

  • Delaware Bay was “discovered” today in 1609.

    This excerpt comes from famousdaily.com on August 28, 2012 The Dutch East India Company is one of the first international corporations in the world. Henry Hudson was enlisted by this company to find an alternate route to China, as Asia was crucial to Western trading. His goal was to find a Northwest Passage, and eventually…

  • Know who to trust for financial advice

    Reproduced from CBSPhilly at http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2012/07/25/3-on-your-side-many-have-no-financial-plan/#comments Knowing whom to trust for financial advice is not a simple subject. It requires an understanding of four separate intellectual concepts that must be reduced to simple and clear personal resolutions. Those concepts are: 1. Avoid potential conflicts of interest 2, Use an adviser who has fiduciary responsibility 3. Keep…

  • “Trust in the Age of Transparency” – Harvard Business Review

    This article ties in to the editorial I’m writing now on “Who to trust” for retail financial services. Yale economist Robert J. Shiller strikes a very different note. In Finance and the Good Society, he agrees that trust in business has been shaken (and cites, as they all do, the Edelman Trust Barometer as evidence),…

  • Partners cannot be employees for federal tax purposes

    IRS Rulings & Other Documents (2001-Earlier), Rev. Rul. 69-184 1 , 1969-1 CB 256, Internal Revenue Service, (Jan. 1, 1969) Section 3121.–Definitions 26 CFR 31.3121(d)-1: Who are employees. (Also Sections 3306, 3401; 31.3306(i)-1, 31.3401(c)-1.)